IMF head charged over 'sex crime'

 16 May 2011 Last updated at 01:10 GMT  Dominique Strauss-Kahn was censured for an "error of judgement" over a 2008 affair The head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been charged by New York police over an alleged sex attack on a hotel maid.

Mr Strauss-Kahn, 62, was taken off an Air France plane at JFK airport just minutes before it left for Paris.

Police say the maid has now formally identified him in a line-up. He faces three charges which he denies.

The married former French finance minister is also considered a possible Socialist candidate for the presidency.

The BBC's Hugh Schofield, in Paris, says Mr Strauss-Kahn has been riding high in the polls and was seen as having a genuine chance of beating President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Martine Aubry, leader of France's Socialist Party, described news of his arrest as a "thunderbolt" which left her "astounded".

Mr Strauss-Kahn is expected to appear before a New York state court before 0100 local time on Monday (0500 GMT), despite reports of a delay as police apply for search warrants for further DNA evidence.

His lawyer, William Taylor, told Agence France-Presse news agency: "We saw him, he's doing OK. And we'll be in court with him later in the afternoon."

Mr Strauss-Kahn had been scheduled to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday, but that meeting has now been cancelled, reports say.

On Monday he had planned to attend a meeting of European Union finance ministers in Brussels on Monday to discuss the bailouts of Portugal and Greece.

Correspondents say his detention is likely to complicate ongoing efforts to stabilise the finances of struggling eurozone member states.

In a brief statement posted online on Sunday, an IMF spokeswoman acknowledged Mr Strauss-Kahn's arrest and said the organisation would not comment on the case.

"The IMF remains fully functioning and operational," she added.

There will be a special IMF session on Sunday of the executive board and John Lipsky will be acting IMF managing director in Mr Strauss-Kahn's absence.

'Locked in'

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest unfolded in dramatic fashion as he was poised to fly to Europe.

A spokesman for New York's Port Authority said they detained Mr Strauss-Kahn at JFK airport at the request of the New York Police Department (NYPD).

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Mr Strauss-Kahn had been charged with a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment relating to an incident involving a 32-year-old woman.

Continue reading the main story Born 25 April 1949 in ParisAttended France's prestigious Institute for Political Studies (Sciences Po)Becomes finance minister in 1997Loses bid for Socialist Party presidential candidacy to Segolene Royal in 2006Selected IMF head in 2007Mr Browne said the allegations had been made by a 32-year-old woman who worked at the hotel, which has been identified as the Sofitel near Times Square. His accommodation there was described by the New York Times as a luxury suite costing $3,000 per night (￡1,900).

"We received a call that a chambermaid in a hotel in midtown Manhattan had been sexually assaulted by the occupant of a luxury suite at that hotel, and that that individual had fled," Mr Browne told the BBC.

"The maid described being forcibly attacked, locked in the room and sexually assaulted," he said.

Speaking to Reuters, Mr Browne gave more details on the allegations against Mr Strauss-Kahn.

"She told detectives he came out of the bathroom naked, ran down a hallway to the [suite] foyer where she was, pulled her into a bedroom and began to sexually assault her, according to her account."

"She pulled away from him and he dragged her down a hallway into the bathroom where he engaged in a criminal sexual act, according to her account to detectives. He tried to lock her into the hotel room."

Mr Strauss-Kahn then made his way to the airport but left his mobile phone and other items behind, Mr Brown said.

"It looked like he got out of there in a hurry."

By the time police established that the occupant of the room was Mr Strauss-Kahn, the IMF chief was on board an Air France plane at John F Kennedy airport, about to depart for Paris.

"Our detectives requested of the airport authorities that they stop the plane from leaving, went to the airport and took him into custody," Mr Browne said.

"If our officers had been 10 minutes later he would have been in the air and on their way to France."

The woman has been treated at hospital for minor injuries, said Mr Browne.

'Error of judgement'

Mr Strauss-Kahn ran for the French Socialist Party's presidential candidacy in 2006 but lost to Segolene Royal.

He was appointed managing director of the IMF the following year.

Mr Strauss-Kahn has won praise for his stewardship of the IMF, which he has guided through difficult times including the recent world financial crisis.

Police say the allegations were made by a 32-year-old woman working at the hotel

But in 2008 he was investigated by the IMF board over his relationship with a female member of his staff.

The board ruled his actions "reflected a serious error of judgment" but that the relationship had been consensual. He apologised to IMF staff and his wife, French TV personality Anne Sinclair.

Mr Strauss-Kahn has not yet announced whether he intends to run in the 2012 French presidential elections, but had widely been expected to do so.

David L. Hackett, Led Efforts on Poverty and Juvenile Crime, Dies at 84

The cause was complications of diabetes, his son-in-law Kevin Ellis said.

Mr. Hackett, a close friend of Robert F. Kennedy’s since their prep school days at Milton Academy in Massachusetts, was executive director of the President’s Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Crime from 1961 to 1964. The committee was created by President John F. Kennedy in May 1961 after Mr. Hackett accompanied Robert Kennedy, then the attorney general, on a shirt-sleeve tour of poor New York neighborhoods, interviewing members of street gangs.

President Kennedy declared a five-year “total attack” on juvenile delinquency. With Mr. Hackett as director and an initial budget of $10 million, the committee provided grants to state, local and private agencies for programs offering counseling to juvenile offenders, connecting them to job opportunities and training youth counselors.

In an interview on Tuesday, Joseph P. Kennedy II, Robert Kennedy’s eldest son and a former Massachusetts congressman, said Mr. Hackett’s work had far-reaching impact.

“The outgrowth of that effort was the establishment of over a thousand agencies across the country,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Every major city and many rural communities now have community action agencies that began with the juvenile delinquency program and grew into the broader mission of fighting poverty.”

In 1962, Mr. Hackett was also chairman of a study group calling for the creation of a National Service Corps, a domestic version of the Peace Corps. That concept contributed to the establishment two years later of Volunteers in Service to America, or Vista, as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty.

After leaving government service, Mr. Hackett was director of the R.F.K. Memorial, a nonprofit organization established after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, which focused on poverty and human rights issues. In that capacity he created the Youth Policy Institute, which tracked federal spending and policy on youth issues, family planning and job training and also published an influential monthly newsletter. It now runs more than 100 programs around the country, with the goal of lifting families out of poverty.

David Low Hackett was born in Dedham, Mass., on Nov. 12, 1926, the fourth of five children of William and Louisa Haydock Hackett. His father was a prominent Boston banker.

Mr. Hackett is survived by his wife of 55 years, the former Judith Williams; two sons, Christopher Hackett and Robert Hackett; three daughters, Louisa Hackett, Kimberly Hackett and Victoria Hackett; and 11 grandchildren.

“Dave was my dad’s best friend,” Joseph Kennedy said.

Mr. Hackett and Robert Kennedy met at Milton Academy in 1942, where David was a star on the hockey, football and baseball teams.

“R.F.K. could have remained an outcast” but for that friendship, Evan Thomas wrote in his 2000 biography, “Robert Kennedy: His Life” (Simon & Schuster).

Milton’s “tone and culture were High WASP,” the book says, “unwelcoming to Catholic new money.” And yet the “schoolboy god” — David — embraced the shy newcomer, who was taken by his new friend’s renegade antics.

In the summer of 1943, Mr. Hackett spent six weeks taking courses at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. There he befriended a budding author, John Knowles, who in 1959 would write the coming-of-age novel “A Separate Peace.” One of the main characters — Phineas, a carefree athlete whose leg is broken in a fall from a tree — was modeled on David, Mr. Knowles said. After prep school and service as a paratrooper in Europe during World War II, Mr. Hackett attended McGill University in Montreal, where he played hockey. He was selected for the United States Olympic hockey team in 1952 but could not compete because of a broken ankle.

In 1960, after a stint as editor of The Montrealer magazine in Canada, Mr. Hackett joined John Kennedy’s presidential campaign, serving as its director of correspondence and manager of “the boiler room,” the operation that tracked the leanings of delegates before and during the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.

In 1968, he ran the boiler room for Robert Kennedy’s presidential bid and was in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, when Mr. Kennedy was assassinated. Mr. Hackett was a pallbearer at his friend’s funeral.